Deontic Intentionality
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Gabor, Zachary
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Gabor, Zachary. 2024. Deontic Intentionality. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Abstract
I aim to vindicate, in naturalistic terms, the idea that our beliefs ‘aim at truth’ in a strikingly strong sense: we are subject to the Truth Norm (“TN”) on our beliefs, whose content is one ought to believe p iff p. The first chapter motivates this aim. Deploying a twist on Lewis Caroll’s parable of Achilles and the Tortoise, I argue that our practice of forming shared consensus about what is the case through conversation embodies, in its very structure, an understanding of ourselves as subject to TN. We cannot seriously contemplate a way of life in which this practice is not available, so this leaves us two choices: either TN really does govern our beliefs, or we are driven to the skeptical conclusion that we are stuck fundamentally misunderstanding ourselves. Avoiding this skeptical conclusion is at least worth a try. I further argue that a naturalistic account of TN would constitute progress toward a naturalistic understanding of the relation of the objective to the subjective. Finally, I indicate a general strategy for overcoming the obvious objections to TN: objections from the existence of truths for which we have no evidence, truths which would be cumbersome or distressing to believe, and so on. These objections indeed point to problems with the most immediately available ways of believing the truth. But it may be that ψ-ing is the most immediately available way of ϕ-ing, and that you ought not to ψ, but that you nonetheless ought to ϕ.The remainder of the dissertation aims to give a naturalistic account of the relevant sorts of beliefs and requirements according to which just such a situation obtains with respect the Truth Norm and our beliefs. I propose notions of requirement and belief built of from teleological building blocks and to argue that they fit together to vindicate TN in the human form of life, and to give a naturalistic account of the relevant teleological building blocks.
First, the building blocks: the project requires a notion of purpose that, while naturalistic, is liberal enough to vindicate as reality the appearances of purposiveness in both biological and social organization. I develop a notion of purpose answering to this requirement. I argue that, whereas critics have held that such efforts rely on an oversimplification of empirical reality, it is actually these critics who commit a converse kind of oversimplification: they oversimplify, and thus unduly constrain, what it would take for the empirical facts to ground the reality of the widespread appearance of teleology in the biological and social world.
Next, the notions of belief and requirement. A belief is a state of preparedness (a “disposition, teleologically enriched”) to produce indicative signals with a given content. To have the function of an indicative signal with content p is, in turn, to be meant to adapt those elements of the recipient’s teleological organization which are sensitive to whether-p to the contingency that-p. To be subject to a hypothetical imperative if you’re A-ing, you ought to B is to be in a situation in which there is a substantive opportunity to B in keeping with the normal functioning of your capacity to do something that plays the role of making and recognizing an ought-judgment. The job-description of such an ought-judgment comprises functioning as an indicative signal with content A-ing calls for B-ing – a notion which may be glossed as the circumstance that best efforts to A entail efforts to A by B-ing – and an imperative signal prompting or ensuring B-ing. TN will be functionally like a categorical imperative, a hypothetical imperative with the antecedent if you’re leading a human life…
Last comes the argument for the Truth Norm. It involves working with precise formulations of the notions merely glossed above, but the intuition is this: there are limits on the extent to which nonhuman animals are subject to something akin to TN as a norm on their representational states, deriving from the limitations on the range of ends around which their lives are teleologically organized. There is only so much a non-human animal might be able to do to get true beliefs, or to put them to good use. We, on the other hand, make our living by forming and working in social arrangements of potentially endless variety. Our way of life involves availing ourselves of the efforts of the groups we are part of to get true beliefs, and it also involves expressing our beliefs to further the group efforts we are part of by adapting them to the facts. Thus, I argue, there are not substantive boundaries on the truths we might hope to attain or the uses to which we might put them, and so, we are subject to TN.
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